Ubisoft has recently chosen to shut down XDefiant after months of struggling with its low player count. The game will be ending its live service and will be inaccessible in June 2025. However, it seems the repercussions of XDefiant‘s shutdown affected not only the players but also Ubisoft’s employees. Ubisoft is also closing two of its branches, leading to the layoff of hundreds of employees.
The information comes directly from Ubisoft’s blog. It will be shutting down its Ubisoft San Francisco and Ubisoft Osaka, leaving 143 employees jobless in San Francisco. Additionally, Ubisoft will ramp down their Sydney production site, laying off and losing a combined additional 134 employees from Osaka and Sydney.
“To those team members leaving Ubisoft, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions. Please know that we are committed to supporting you during this transition,” says Marie-Sophie de Waubert, Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer.
This brings the total number of laid-off employees to 277. Some of them are on their last day of work, while others will likely stay until early 2025.
Ubisoft also admitted that the XDefiant‘s closure has brought difficult consequences for the aforementioned teams and satellite studios. Almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide would also be transferred to other roles within Ubisoft, while the other half were more or less part of the aforementioned layoffs.
Despite the big round of Ubisoft lay-offs, a skeleton crew will remain focused on XDefiant until its scheduled shutdown on June 3, 2025.
Still, Ubisoft remains faithful to live-service games as a pillar of its strategy, citing its success in games like Rainbow Six, For Honor, The Crew, and others. XDefiant was apparently a valuable lesson for them and something they’ll apply in the future.
Ubisoft is notably struggling with its finances after hitting its record low in stock value as an aftermath of its Assassin’s Creed: Shadows controversy. Star Wars: Outlaws didn’t fare better and underperformed as per Ubisoft’s estimates, especially for a game associated with such a huge franchise.
